Verity Healthcare

From swimsuit to scrubs, this CEO leads within the boardroom and ED


Steven Hanks, MD, president and CEO of Syracuse, N.Y.-based St. Joseph’s Well being and Albany, N.Y.-based St. Peter’s Well being Companions, would not simply lead hospitals, he works in them, commonly buying and selling his swimsuit for scrubs to work within the hospital emergency departments. 

Dr. Hanks lately joined the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast to debate his roles as a CEO and working towards emergency doctor, and the way his twin work boosts worker morale, strengthens his management and worker relationships, and offers him firsthand data of the challenges frontline healthcare staff face each day.

Editor’s word: Responses had been calmly edited for readability and size. 

Query: How do you steadiness the tasks of being each president and CEO with working common shifts within the emergency division?

Dr. Steven Hanks: It has been an fascinating journey for me, as a result of though I have been an government for a few years, I by no means wished to lose my medical expertise or disconnect from the medical surroundings for various causes. A few of it is egocentric. I like being a health care provider. That is what I went to medical faculty for, and I nonetheless vastly get pleasure from it. 

What I’ve come to be taught over time is that there are huge different advantages to a pacesetter of a healthcare group really entering into the trenches with the troops on the entrance line, as a result of I’ve usually mentioned that I realized extra about the best way the assorted items of my organizations work from the small period of time I spend within the medical setting than all the opposite time I spend in conferences, working with my board on rounds and all these different issues. There have been a variety of aspect advantages. 

One other massive profit is it actually speaks to the morale of our colleagues after they see the CEO basically within the emergency division or on the flooring as a hospitalist, pitching in and serving to, and so they know that I expertise what they expertise. I stay with the identical frustrations they’ve with the medical file. I see the identical points with move and the timeliness of turnaround of laboratory research, or X-ray research, or no matter it could be. I’ve to take care of the truth that we could not be capable of settle for a switch, or we could have problem effectuating a switch. All of them understand I am strolling a mile of their sneakers. It does have a really uplifting impact, I consider, on the morale of our colleagues. 

Q: What impressed you to tackle vacation shifts, permitting docs to spend time with their households?

SH: We’ve got 29 separate entities I am accountable for. It is a very massive group. My day job actually would not afford me time to do medical work throughout typical work hours. I take time on a Friday night, on a weekend or on a vacation. The ER physicians or the hospitalists, once I’ve achieved this with the hospitalist service prior to now, they actually like that, as a result of it relieves one in all them of getting to be on a weekend or a vacation. For me, it really works out as a result of my children are all grown and I am out there. It additionally provides to that affect on the employees after they see me engaged on a vacation, of all issues. Numerous physicians who’re engaged in medical administration positions or government positions who nonetheless follow usually will follow throughout the typical daytime hours, and that is not what I do.

Q: How does your hands-on expertise within the emergency division inform your management selections for St. Joseph’s Well being and St. Peter’s Well being Companions?

SH: We’ve got a number of hospitals, and I am going between a few them. I can distinction and examine, and it is all the time outstanding how related a number of the points are, and but how totally different the approaches, responses and options will be even inside the similar group. 

That is been one perception that I have been capable of carry, the transitioning of concepts from one entity to a different. We all the time speak about sharing of greatest practices, it is nearly change into overused, and but, whenever you take a look at what number of organizations actually are capable of successfully try this, it is a small quantity. 

It is made me much more approachable within the eyes of the employees. The employees are far more prepared to achieve out to me straight, or to cease me within the hallway, or if I see employees out in the neighborhood someplace, there is a sense of approachability that I feel is bred from the truth that I am spending that point. I’ve that further alternative for communication and understanding what the employees challenges are, what the problems are, and it has been enormously useful. 

We have been having issues in lots of emergency departments with the move of sufferers due to nursing shortages, actually throughout everything of upstate New York the place we’re positioned. We nonetheless have beds which can be offline post-pandemic. Sufferers who’re in want of hospital companies are piling up within the emergency departments, and that leaves no room for the subsequent emergency affected person to return in. The ready rooms get full, the wait instances get lengthy. It isn’t a great state of affairs from the angle of the expertise of the affected person, however it’s additionally an unsafe situation. I have been capable of see that and glean some insights that I have been capable of carry again to my hospital presidents to say, “Hey, might you do that? Might you attempt that?” They’re very responsive about attempting out varied strategies. 

Q: What message do you hope to ship to your employees by sustaining a medical function alongside your government duties?

SH: I hope they see that we’re all in it collectively and that what we’re actually about is offering care; take care of sufferers, their households, take care of our neighborhood. If not us, who? The hospital enterprise at this time and the well being system enterprise is a really troublesome enterprise, particularly on the non-profit aspect, and notably in components of the nation like ours, the place there’s not a variety of inhabitants progress, populations getting older, and we now have more and more an increasing number of government-insured sufferers, which places unimaginable monetary pressures on our healthcare organizations.

We’ve got to function very lean. The truth that I am in there within the trenches, I skilled that myself. Figuring out that basically helps them to consider that I perceive, that I really feel their ache. 

In the course of the COVID pandemic, we bought to some extent the place we had so many docs out with COVID, and we had so many sufferers that we had been actually operating out of individuals to take care of the sufferers. I got here off of my common duties, and I turned a full-time COVID doctor. I took care of COVID wards for a time period throughout the pandemic. I even volunteered after it settled down in New York to go to a different Trinity Hospital in Idaho to assist them out after they had been determined as properly. It creates an esprit de corps that it is not possible to bottle with out really dwelling it.

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